 Kako, welcome back to Energy Justice in Hawai'i, the bi-weekly, every two weeks, definition of bi-weekly, video interview that we have here on Think Tech Hawai'i. Today we're going to be talking about community ownership and circular economies with special guest Ikaika Hasi. Ikaika is a good friend of mine and fellow conspirator in the community-owned clean energy space, and he is also the president of Hawai'i Federated Industries. I might have got my title wrong, but we're really glad to have him here today. Ikaika, can we start the conversation maybe with a little bit of background on you and Hawai'i Federated Industries, and correct me if I got your title wrong. Oh, that's great. Thank you so much for having me, Ali, and aloha kako. Ikei manawa, oko hola elua, kei oka po, aioa oma Iceland, so nui ko oha oha oia, Hawai'i. I'm not sure what time it is back home, maybe 4 p.m. Is that right? Okay, all right. Yeah, so I'm from Hawai'i. I just happen to be in a very different part of the world at the moment. I live in Kalihi Valley. My background is in community organizing, labor organizing, and a few years ago, my wife, who most recently was at the Sierra Club, she came home from a talk that Bill McKibbin had given her or that had given, and she was sharing that in the talk, Bill McKibbin said that climate is different from every other issue, from any other issue that I had ever worked on, sovereignty, decolonization, sort of stuff. And it's an issue that has a deadline. And over the last couple of years, I think we've all come to realize that really climate is the big job of this decade. And so that's why I decided to pivot my own personal energies and my own mission towards addressing as much as I can just as a person, the climate issue for our people in Hawai'i, but also thinking about how Hawai'i can really lead the world in addressing some of the key questions, like community ownership, circularity, those kind of things. Awesome. And thank you so much for being awake at two in the morning, your time to be with us. Just for our audience who's not as familiar with the awesome kind of range of projects that Hawai'i federated industries is working on, can you give us a kind of a sample of what projects may be without any super top secret specifics that you find? No, it's okay. I like sort of an open source ethic. So we publish all this stuff on our own website, hawaii.federated.industries. Basically, the big thing that we're working on is we want to think about how do we decarbonize aviation. Aviation is Hawai'i's single largest contribution to the climate crisis. It's something like 34% of our global, of our GHG emissions. It's also a thing that we're completely dependent on. We get back and forth on airplanes. And our entire economy is based around, sort of unfortunately, it's based around tourism, which is also obviously aviation dependent. And it's a major source of economic risk for us. We spend something like $2.7 billion a year on jet fuel. And that's money that we are basically sending to Libya, to Russia, places that don't necessarily share our values. And so, these are all, you know, big kind of questions that frame how we're thinking about aviation and about the role that we can play in climate because aviation is one of those things that is regarded as a hard to decarbonize industry. You know, along with agriculture, marine shipping, those are all very difficult to decarbonize because of the relative energy capacity of batteries versus liquid fuels. So, our goal is by the end of this decade is to try to decarbonize Hawai'i's aviation contribution. Amazing. That's an amazing goal. Just a couple of years away, but we can do it. We can do it. Yes. I'm curious about community ownership and how you see community ownership fitting into the work that Hawai'i federated industries does. You know, so, I'm here in Iceland. One thing that I've learned from my conversations with the the various companies that we've met with here, their geothermal hydroelectric carbon sequestration initiatives and companies is the importance of the fact why I guess, the thing that they all share is that they are either owned by the municipalities or owned by the national government. You know, there's kind of like sub-corporations in the middle, but at the end of the day, these are publicly owned and publicly driven projects. And I think what you get with that is a sense of community, you know, it tends to be sort of more democratic, more centered in what the community wants and needs. And also, I think more responsive to the interests of the community. You know, it's something that we've experienced a lot in Hawai'i where we see energy projects come in and we see the money flow out, right? And we also see oftentimes, like in the situation in Kuhuku, there's one or two turbines that really created anxiety for the community. They asked for there to be relatively minor changes to the way in which those projects, those specific turbines were deployed and located. My sense is that the community wasn't really listened to. And I think that if the ownership structure were more grounded in the community, I think we might have seen a very different outcome to those situations. So the way that we're focusing on this is to try to build as much local ownership into the basic corporate structure of Hawai'i federal industry, sort of high-fives, we call it, just to ensure that sort of accountability. And frankly, Ali, you know, I'd like to hear about how things are going on Molokei, because your work on Molokei is sort of emblematic and illustrative of both how we can do community ownership and also why it's so important. So can you share about how things are going there? I would love to, absolutely. Yeah, I think about community ownership in a lot of the same ways that you just expressed. And I think the group that we work with on Molokei, the Hohaku Energy Cooperative Molokei, is this new entity that has formed just for the explicit reason of owning renewable energy generation. There might be other projects that the co-op might pursue in the future. But for now, we're just talking about this one solar and battery storage project. And I think that and the project would be owned by a newly formed cooperative of just residents of Molokei get to be members of this cooperative. And I think that responsiveness that you talked about is exactly one of the benefits of having community ownership because nobody else is going to make these decisions for where the project should go and what it should look like and which kind of solar panels should we buy other than the community group itself. And I think we're still kind of figuring out what is the format of that decision making look like. I think that's pretty new to go down to the very technical like should we choose this solar panel or that solar panel? And if it's from this company, should it be this wattage or that wattage? But we found that community members broadly have been super curious and empowered by the idea of understanding what the decisions are to be made and then making those decisions. And of course, we have some decisions that don't go like so smoothly that there's some back and forth, there's some discussion and trade offs between decisions. But I think for the most part that responsiveness has led us to be able to move pretty quickly over the last year and a half going from project idea to now some support, a pretty good amount of financial support and organizational support to be able to do a pretty impressive project for the scale of the island for sure. Yeah, I mean, I mean, we see that I think in the energy market in general that you can be a massive, well-funded corporation and still run into problems getting an energy project delivered. And we see a lot of problems with that right now. I think actually there's a greater possibility of these projects coming to fruition with a real community base because it's clear who wants it, right? The people of Molokai want this project to be delivered. And so they will demand it, they're going to call you an ally when there's problems, they're going to fundraise for it, they're going to hold their political leaders responsible and accountable. So it's really important for it to be a demand-driven project. Yeah, sorry, there's one other point that I was trying to make, but why don't you keep talking at all? I'm sure it'll come out to me. Yeah, great. I'll make a little plug here also for anyone listening live that might have questions for Ikaika and I on community ownership of Clean Energy, email in your questions to questionsatthinktechhoi.com and we will do our best to answer them here in this discussion or we'll have to schedule a follow-up session if you ask us any stumper questions. Did I give you enough time to think of your other point? You did and I appreciate that. What I wanted to mention is that we've, I think in Hawaii, we've gotten out of the habit or we sort of lost our knack and our familiarity with this sort of community-driven approach. It used to be really common for us to do large engineering projects as a community and what I'm thinking about when I talk about that is are things that are beyond our lifetimes but not beyond our memory. So for instance, I grew up in Kaneohe and just up the road in the Palo Alto area from where I grew up, it was a heia fish pond which, you know, is 2021. I think it's about 800 years old at this point and that's an example but only one of many of these examples of Hawaiians coming together to do incredible engineering projects and to do it collectively. You know, a few years ago, there was a community workday where the organizers of Pai Pai Ohae asked for volunteers to come to Puni Kupu to close the hole. There was a gap in the hole, in the wall on the fish pond and it was a beautiful day. There were hundreds of people all carrying stones, you know, and the stones were different sizes, different sized people can have different sized stones but to see everyone come together, it reminded me, I think, of something that was probably a much more common site back in the day, back in the day when we were, you know, just a little bit more self-governing, a little bit more self-sustaining, where we recognize that our future lies in each other. It's not about money, it's not about even technology, it's actually about us as a people working together and so these efforts are going to take, you know, there's going to be some tripping up, you know, we're going to make some mistakes, we're going to learn from those mistakes but ultimately it's about building a stronger community and that's the key, I think, for us fundamentally, of dealing with this massive transition in order to deal with confront and ultimately reverse the climate crisis. I mean, for HIFI that's really our goal is, you know, we think of it as kind of a three-fold thing, it's to reverse climate change primarily and then to also strengthen and make our island economies more circular and then create good local jobs because we need, you know, fundamentally more healthy economy a more healthy society. I'm curious in prepping for this session, I thought of three specific pros of community ownership and I want to read them, well, list them to you and hear if you have any others to add to that or any nuances there. The first one is kind of the one that we've just been talking about that responsiveness that like community members have better knowledge to build better projects that use our resources better and they kind of, they solve the problem, they fill the puka way better than somebody externally could, I believe and I think we're proven that out. So one is better projects because we have better local knowledge. The other one is better like more equitable decision-making because the person who financially owns the project gets to decide who do we hire, where does it go, what does it look like, where do we source our equipment from which historically a lot of those decisions can have reverberating effects in a community and so if the local community is deciding who gets hired we can hire more locally and so the decision-making is really important about where we build things and then as well the last one that I think is really important is the wealth creation and kind of distributing right now our big companies that are that are owned by maybe a few individuals have kind of have centralized the wealth in in a few individuals and I think community ownership can be that great way of distributing collective wealth is across a community and keep retain that wealth that like incremental amount of money that a community otherwise might have paid that got extracted to a bigger company outside of the community it kind of remains circular in the community and helps build that wealth and keep that wealth locally. Do you have any additions to that or like nuances there or do you not agree with any of those? I may get a habit of agreeing with the host of any talk show that I'm on but seriously you know the you know these projects wouldn't happen there wouldn't be so much external interest in doing energy projects in Hawaii unless it were a good business right that's that's that's how we that's the only way to understand I think what's going on and so it makes sense for those projects to be to be benefiting local people fundamentally it has to benefit our our community or we got to change the you know the way that we're doing these things yeah absolutely yeah absolutely. Great I love to be agreed with. I'm curious about hi-fi I know that you have expressed to me in the past an interest in you know community ownership of not just the projects that you guys create but of your company as well how are you thinking about that and like what do you think the benefits of that are? Well you know the benefit is is it's just about alignment you know I come out of a community organizing background and so for me being aligned with with my community is it's the only way that that I can sleep at night you know it just it keeps things copacetic and it feels polno if it's grounded in our community so that's the benefit of it the way to the way to do that is to structure the finances of the company such that the owners are the folks you know around us our friends and families our you know the the soccer coaches and the the ministers and just our neighbors that's that's who should be controlling and and driving frankly the direction of our work it just seems to be the most consistent way to do it and you know if you want I can expound a little bit more about kind of what I'm imagining for the future and obviously so we're starting with a really tough project right we're starting with this thing that's like a that's a decade long project we do have a few other things that we're that we're thinking about working on and we mentioned them on our website a little bit we're we're looking at some opportunities with regards to the invasive eucalyptus plantation that was planted in the hamakua coast about 20 years ago I believe and you know we're we're trying to figure out a strategy that would allow for the community in hamakua on the big island not not hamakua on Oahu to to begin to kind of reposition their natural resources away from a plantation system you know previously with sugar now it's eucalyptus to something which is more regenerative more based on on native trees and native plants and more about kind of feeding the economic needs of the community directly so I'm sorry economic and also cultural you know needs so we're looking at different products that can be made out of the eucalyptus since we're doing a couple of what we're calling R&D projects just straight up research and development looking at for instance biochar which is a way of basically paralyzing a some biomass or a tree and turning it into a carbon neutral or even a carbon negative soil additive basically burying the carbon in the soil so we're looking at doing biochar we're also investigating and researching and developing different kinds of furniture or or building materials that can be manufactured from the eucalyptus with the goal of essentially monetizing the biomass and and allowing for the land to be returned to native forestry and to regenerative agriculture so that's that's another project we're working on from amazing that is awesome when you think about a specific project like that in a specific area do you think about a hi-fi as like a broadly community owned company across the state of Hawaii that then owns a project on big island owns a project on Oahu or do you think about it more locally in terms of like the folks who live in Hamakua owning that projects and the folks who live on the Kona side owning a different project how do you how do you think about that I guess the way that I think about it is you know I take the word federated I think that it's a fun word for me what I'm imagining is that if if we can accomplish our goals with the R&D like that's a big if and I don't want to oversell it you know we are we our goals to do essentially scientific research to figure out can we make a useful product in terms of biochar and building materials etc but once that's you know if we can prove it out then that becomes a little business that can be structured as a cooperative like a formal workers cooperative or just as a more generally you know small business with with employees etc but that entity you know would hire it would have its own group of people that that work with or work for that group and it would generate livelihoods for those people in you know wherever they are and if they're in Hamakua then it is to the benefit of the people of Hamakua I think that is a really cool I think about community ownership sometimes like at the at a wide scale like a national government is also community ownership in in a way but sometimes like the the farther away the many levels between the individual person who gets to give input on a project and the powers that be somewhere in that power structure sometimes the like responsiveness gets lost and and the distribution of wealth equally gets lost and I think that what you are describing is a good way of kind of like layering co-ops to to keep that responsiveness wait what when we were one way that we've been thinking about doing it in Hamakua and it depends frankly on whether we can prove out the numbers so that is an if I don't want to you know I want to be kind of real about that is if it does prove to be a good revenue source to do biochar for instance then we've been thinking about essentially building what we're calling like a permanent fund kind of like with Alaska you know that there's the oil revenue from the Alaska oil wells which go into a permanent fund which then benefits the people of Alaska on a sort of perpetual basis you know it's an endowment we're thinking about doing something like that for Hamakua because really what what that community needs and what I think a lot of our communities that are going through an economic transition need is a dependable source of revenue that can fund the future changes that you know whether that's planting native trees you know doing more energy projects you know supporting cultural and educational programs raising up new group new generations of young leaders these are all things which require funding and you know there's this interesting opportunity with lots of particularly above a thing that people don't want anymore which in this case is the eucalyptus and we can essentially convert that into a usable material that also has financial value and use that that financial value to endow you know the perpetual perpetual fund I just think it's a very interesting opportunity whether it's financially whether it actually works it's something that we're that we're you know examining right now through the R&D process and I'm hoping that it does. I think that endowment idea is such a powerful one from a community perspective because we're talking about communities who have been historically disinvested for like decades to centuries to probably longer than that and one of the biggest hurdles for the Molokai project that we have to give over is if our project costs several million dollars where are we going to get that several million dollars there's not just you know 20 million dollars hanging out in a disinvested community just waiting for a project like this to come around and so to create a fund that could support other community on projects that are maybe harder to capitalize what a powerful thing. Yeah I think it is too you know it's it's we're in this crazy economy where ultimately the only thing you need is money and I've always believed that actually people are more important than than money and if we can organize our communities so that we can you know transform the relationship to capital you know where the people are more important than capital than then that's the economy that I want to build. I just think that's so much better. We've got just a couple of minutes left. Do you have any closing thoughts you want to share with our audience or things we should ponder for next time? Well you know actually Ali can you share kind of what are the next steps with Molokai? Yeah I would love to. So we just found some news out a couple of weeks ago that we're looks like we're aiming for a February due date for our proposal to the utility for this community owned solar plus storage CVE project. So we're kind of ramping up to to put in all of our deliverables and make sure that we have commitment for financing for that project and have a clear picture of where it's going to go and and what the engineering diagrams look like. There's a pretty heavy lift between now and then. We've got four three meetings left before the end of the year and then in January we'll kind of be tying up loose ends with the community group about the subscription model and the precise layout. And then and then once we submit that proposal we kind of wait for six months while working on to hear whether we get the contract from the utility and then we get to move along there. And then we're off to new projects like micro grids and workforce development training and all sorts of other programs that they're really excited about. That's great. I'm really glad to hear about the progress that Molokai is making. Yeah it's really you know you guys are setting the the course that I think a lot of us can follow behind. Well thank you and Mahalo for joining me again at 2 a.m. from Iceland. You are a champion. I really appreciate it and I look forward to chatting more about community ownership in the future. We'll have to have you back on. Sounds good. Thanks so much, Hallie. Thanks to ThinkDec. Yeah thanks.